Wakasa Mizushima
| affiliation = , | team = (formerly) | partner = (formerly) | family = Ayume (wife) Shintarō (son) (younger half-brother) | rank = | chunin age = 14 | occupation = | nature type = | jutsu = | tools = | other = and specialist }} Wakasa Mizushima is a -level from and the older half-brother of . He is highly skilled in and techniques, and possesses an affinity for . Formerly, Wakasa was a member of Kirigakure’s , where he operated under the alias of Nigauri (苦瓜, lit. "bitter melon") and successfully completed many high-risk missions and assignments. It was during this time that he became known as the "Master of the Hidden Mist" due to his unique combination of Water Release techniques and . He served as a leading Anbu operative alongside his brother for six years until he resigned for undisclosed reasons. While he was originally mistrusted by the other residents Kirigakure due to his blood-stained past and connection with Zabuza, Wakasa has managed to rebuild his reputation and regain the respect of his community, mainly due to his level-headed advice and hesitation to commit to violence. After leaving the Anbu he became an and has since mentored many of the village’s and . Currently, he lives with his family outside Kirigakure, hoping to avoid any form of active combat as he and his wife Ayume are expecting their second child. Background Early Life Wakasa was born during the time of the . His mother, Noe, was a citizen of who had migrated to the in order to work in one of the nascent processing plants. Even though she had left Kiri due to the economic downfall that plagued the land during the Village of the Bloody Mist (血霧の里, Chigiri no Sato) era, conditions in the Land of Waves were not much of an improvement. The Gatō Company kept its employees under its thumb, and eventually Noe found that while her workload continued to increase, her wages had become dismal. However, when she finally made a direct complaint to , who was around age twenty at the time despite his position as head of the company, he offered to increase her wages only under the condition that she provide him with sexual favors. Initially she refused, but her situation worsened until she had no choice but to accept his offer. Wakasa was born around a year later, some months after Gatō had tired of Noe and had relegated her to little more than a prostitute within the smuggling ring. As such, even though his mother did her best to care for him, the first four years of Wakasa’s life were spent in hardship and solitude. Fortunately, the exploitation would finally end when Noe met Taka Mizushima, a shinobi from Kirigakure who had been assigned as a body guard on a trade mission in the Land of Waves. After he learned she was originally from the , he agreed to help her escape from the smuggling company and take her back to Kirigakure with him. He would not, however, accept payment from Noe, which puzzled her until she realized that, contrary to her expectations, he truly loved her. After returning to Land of Water, they settled in one of the southern islands that was more distantly located from the chaos and danger of Kirigakure. While the family had finally found a sense of stability, conditions were far from idyllic as Taka was an exacting man who, although he genuinely cared for Noe and her son, was prone to bouts of silent, dangerous rage. To everyone's surprise, it was discovered that Wakasa possessed enough chakra to perform ninjutsu, and Taka began to train him in the arts of the shinobi. However, Wakasa could never seem to satisfy the demands of his adopted father, especially in Taka’s own specialty: . Three years later, when Wakasa was seven, his younger half-brother was born, and Wakasa found he was even more marginalized by Taka when his brother quickly became their father's favorite. When Wakasa was eleven years old, the southern region of the Land of Water was hit by a typhoon. Wakusa and Zabuza had been trapping crabs on the edge of a river near their house when the heavy storm arrived. The river was already swollen because of the rainy season, and to make matters worse the tide was high that day. Wakasa tried to carry Zabuza back to safety, but it was impossible for him to make much headway in the strong winds of the gale. Somehow, they managed to reach the bridge that led to their house, but here the situation worsened as the water level had risen to just beneath the walkway. The structure flexed wildly under the strength of the current, and would no doubt give way at any second. With debris washing up over the planks, it was only by sheer fortune that they were able to make it halfway without being swept over the side. It was then that their mother found them, having searched for them frantically ever since the storm had begun. Noe had brought a fishing net with her, and cast it out to Wakasa from where she stood on the bank. Her arrival had come not a moment too soon, for the instant Wakasa grabbed onto the net, the bridge’s piers were pulled from the riverbank and it was swept away from beneath them. Noe tried to pull them to the shore while Wakasa clung to the net, with Zabuza’s arms wrapped tight around his shoulders. They stared wide-eyed at the raging water around them, and for the first time in his life Wakasa experienced the deep, consuming sensation of true fear. Their mother did her best, but it was all she could do to hold them back against the current. She told Wakasa to pull himself towards her, and they were able to make some progress. Then the worst occurred. With a roar the flood began in earnest, and thousands upon thousands of liters of sheer crushing force slammed into them. A small building, half-dissolved in the water, caught the boys, the net, and Noe, dragging everyone beneath the surface. For a few terrifying moments they were submerged, tossed back and forth in the underwater chaos. Then, miraculously, they came to the surface. The net had saved them, wrapping around the trunk of a stalwart tree, and all three had somehow managed to hold on to it. Noe dragged herself and her sons into the branches, fighting against pain and exhaustion. Her left leg had been torn open and broken by a piece of submerged debris, but she put on a brave face for her sons. As there was nothing more that they could do they waited, hearts pounding in agonizing terror, clinging to each other, listening with dread to the creaking wood as the roots of the tree began to snap. Just when they had begun to give up all hope, Taka found them. It had taken him a great deal of effort, but he had finally been able to pin-down their location based on Zabuza’s chakra presence, who had the highest amount of chakra out of the three despite his young age. There was not much time to act. Slamming his palm into the ground, Taka formed a bridge of hard-packed mud in order to reach the tree. He crossed the raging waters to help them across. Wakasa took Zabuza and started back first, with their parents close behind. But before Taka, carrying Noe in his arms, could reach the shore, a back draft of water from the sea pushed up the river. The wave broke on the frail path of earth, and a wall of water three times the height of a man came crashing down on top of them. When the foam and spray finally cleared, there was no sign of their parents. Wakasa screamed their names until his voice went hoarse and he could not speak, succumbing to silent sobs that were drowned out in the downpour. Staring down river, he thought he caught sight of his father, clinging desperately to Noe’s limp body as Taka tried to latch on to the bank and crawl out of the water. But the next moment they had disappeared from sight, vanishing forever beneath the surface of the flood. Conscription into the Anbu At first, Wakasa tried to care for his younger brother, but the death of their parents and the destruction of their village had left them with nothing to rely on for subsistence. It was then that Wakasa’s childhood truly ended as he was forced to take on the responsibilities of caring for himself and another person. He realized that scavenging for food would be easier in a populated area, so they moved to the main island in the Land of Waves and found a place to stay in a shantytown on the edge of Kirigakure that had been built by other refugees. Shortly afterwards, Wakasa found work a free-diver: his only option to avoid starvation. Usually considered to be an honorable, if difficult, occupation, divers traditionally collected food such as seaweed, shellfish, sea urchins, octopus, and oysters. Pearls were rare and considered a bonus, although not the chief goal in diving. However, as the Land of Water sunk further into depravity under the Fourth Mizukage administration, the emphasis shifted to hunting for pearls, until the industry eventually reached a type of commercial frenzy. The divers were often forced to descend to depths of over thirty meters on a single breath to find oysters, which placed them at a high risk of eye damage, shallow water blackout, and drowning, in addition to the exposure to strong currents and dangerous sea-creatures, particularly sharks. Needless to say, a diver’s lifespan was often cut short. While older divers were preferred as workers as they could hold their breaths for longer periods of time, the younger a diver started the deeper they could eventually swim. As such, many children were employed in the industry, often in less than scrupulous conditions and for pitiful wages, and Wakasa was no exception. But above anything else, what made learning how to dive difficult for him was the innate fear of the water that he had gained after their parents' a year before. Even though he hated the water, Wakasa forced himself to enter it each day, and it was only by telling himself that it was for the sake of his brother that he was able to keep pushing himself to return to the shore. He would come home each night, cold, exhausted, and dreading the next morning. Still, he took time to train Zabuza in their father’s kenjutsu style, as Zabuza had demonstrated a keen interest and natural talent in the sword. Soon, he found himself constantly bested by his younger brother, although he was unsure if Zabuza’s advantage came as a result of his prodigious skill or from Wakasa’s own constant state of exhaustion. Day by day, Zabuza’s chakra continued to grow, turning dark and stifling. Despite his care and best efforts, and partly because he was bitter at the world himself, Wakasa was unable to salve the hatred that had taken root within Zabuza’s young soul, as his brother had seen the world in all its ugliness and was slowly hardening against it. In fact, his demonic chakra became so intense that it had an effect upon Wakasa, who began to suffer from constant nightmares simply from being within close proximity to Zabuza. He tried to encourage his brother to associate with other children his age in Kiri, but this only had the effect of adding a variety of low-level techniques to Zabuza’s increasingly dangerous arsenal. Thus, when Zabuza announced to Wakasa one day that he wished to join the , Wakasa agreed, if only for the reason that he knew he was powerless to tell Zabuza otherwise. But when he witnessed his younger brother kill over a hundred of his potential classmates in the Academy’s entrance exam, he concluded that his brother had truly become a monster. Zabuza was taken in by one of the instructors at the academy, and while Wakasa felt some remorse over being separated from his brother, he mainly felt relieved that he no longer had to worry about having his throat slashed in his sleep. He returned to his home in Kiri’s shantytown and continued working as a diver. By that time, Wakasa had become one of the most skilled divers in Kiri, and had earned enough to buy his own boat: signifying his first step towards autonomy. But what he had not realized was that, through constant exposure to the rushing power of the tides, his own chakra had begun to grow and become molded by the waves: at one with the water that surrounded him. Around this same time, Kirigakure’s Anbu found themselves short on numbers after they had expended considerable forces in sealing the Three-Tails inside Yagura. In addition, the number of shinobi recruits had dropped significantly since the Village of the Bloody Mist’s academy entrance exam had been implemented. To compensate, Kiri’s shinobi leaders began to scour the land for individuals with sufficient chakra levels between the ages of 12-20 to conscript into both the regular forces and the Anbu. While Wakasa had heard rumors about the disappearances, no one knew that they were being taken into custody by the shinobi themselves. As such, he did his best to keep his head down, and for several months remained undetected. Eventually, however, the recruiters made their way to the shantytown where Wakasa lived, and a pair of disguised as fisherman observed the divers working off the coast. They picked up on Wakasa’s signature and singled him out among the other divers. In fact, Wakasa often used his chakra while diving to help him swim to even greater depths and hold his breath for longer lengths of time, and he prided himself for his ability to remain submerged for up to ten minutes or more. He had come to know the ocean well, and was initially suspicious when the new fishermen, whom he had never seen before, appeared in the bay. As the morning wore on and nothing unusual happened, however, he let his guard slip and did not observe them as closely as he should have. The shinobi recruiters waited until Wakasa made his last dive, then walked over to his boat and secured it. When he swam back to the surface and was about to emerge near his boat, he found rough hands pulling him from the water. He tried to resist as the shinobi bound his hands and feet, but was quickly overpowered as they tied him to his own boat’s anchor and threw him back over the side. As he had been given no time to regain his breath, the struggle to free himself only lasted briefly until he blacked out. Personality Relationships Appearance Although Wakasa is of average height, he possesses a compact build and broad shoulders that serve to create a more powerful stature. While not overly muscular or massy, he has a strong figure that was crafted by years of training. As swimming is his preferred method of exercise, his physique has been honed by the water, and is characterized by a triangular shape and high muscle tone without bulk. He has thick shoulder muscles, a long flat torso, thin waist, and lean powerful legs, with his calf, arm, and abdominal muscles being quite prominent, although swimming works all of the muscle groups in the body. His wide chest cavity also means he has incredible lung capacity, which has aided him in his Water Release techniques. Wakasa’s features are somewhat masculine, with a square nose, angular jaw, and wide mouth. While he is considered by many to be somewhat handsome, he himself has described his face as being “rather forgettable,” as it is plain with commonplace features or simply easy to miss. He has found that this has actually served as an advantage while on missions in the past. Wakasa has dark brown hair that is swept over his eyes, tanned skin, and narrow, light blue eyes. He usually sports stubble on his chin, and is rarely seen without something in his mouth, whether that be his vice of choice—a cigarette—a toothpick, or a piece of straw. He typically wears a basic uniform that consists of a black, long-sleeved shirt with a high neck, arm and hand guards, dark trousers with lower leg mesh armor, standard sandals, and a flak jacket that is reminiscent of those worn by the Anbu. His Shinobi headband is tied to the strap holding his sword, which is slung across his back. Abilities While Wakasa’s skills as a shinobi were largely late to emerge, he possesses considerable prowess as a jounin. As a former member of the Anbu, Wakasa was trained in a wide range of low-level techniques, although his strongest areas of combat are in Water Release jutsu, kenjutsu, and genjutsu. ... Chakra and Physical Prowess Ninjutsu Kenjutsu Anbu Taijutsu Nature Transformation Water Release Earth Release Yin Release Genjutsu Intelligence Plot Trivia *Wakasa's theme song, as stated by the author, is The Beginning, by . *The kanji for Wakasa’s first name translates to "young" (若, waka), and "narrow-minded" (狭, sa). Mizushima means, somewhat obviously, "water island" (水島). However, he does not share his surname with his younger brother, as Zabuza rejected their family name when he became one of the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist, instead taking on the name Momochi (桃地, lit. "peach soil") for himself. *According to the databook(s): :*Wakasa’s hobbies include spending time with his family and swimming. :*Wakasa wishes to fight Zabuza and . :*Wakasa’s most favorite food is fresh vegetables, especially cucumbers. His least favorite food is shellfish, notably clams. :*Wakasa has completed 210 official missions in total: 17 D-rank, 39 C-rank, 83 B-rank, 51 A-rank, 20 S-rank. :*Wakasa’s favorite phrase is "the earth hardens after the rain" (雨降って地固まる, ame futte chi katamaru), meaning "adversity builds character." Quotes *(Speaking about Zabuza) "Maybe it was my own fault—that I neglected him—that he ended up a demon. That was partly the reason why I became an instructor: I wanted to prevent the same thing from happening to someone else all over again."